By DCist contributor Dave Weigel

What’s the opposite of insult comedy? We know how to react when a has-been (sorry, “classic entertainer”) like Don Rickles points out fat people and tries to get them crying, or when ironic comics like Zach Galifiankis or Neil Hamburger blow up in righteous anger at their audiences.

But what do you call it when a comic wants to be your pal? The audience at Stella’s show at the Sixth and I Historic Synagogue could have doubled for the crowd at a median Black Cat show, but with fewer beards and more earnestness. They clutched DVDs of Wet Hot American Summer or the Stella TV show, and if they didn’t come with merch, they shopped for Soviet realist posters of the comic group and faint beige T-shirts with their logo and cute-nerd faces.

These people were dedicated fans. The cult of Stella dates back to 1993, when group members Michael Ian Black, David Wain, and Michael Showalter formed 29 percent of the writing and acting staff of the MTV skit show The State. The show ended in 1995, but when David Wain makes an offhand reference to an upcoming DVD collection, the crowd’s cheers are deafening.